Welcome to The Grove’s Blog

The Grove has worked with Family, Schools and Community Partnerships (FSCP), part of the Oakland Unified School District, to envision the department’s journey over the next five years and think about possible concrete steps to strengthen its work.

FSCP, the Oakland public school system’s largest department, addresses all non-academic support for students and families, partnering with external community agencies as needed. The department’s goal is to create full-service...

Recently The Grove’s Rachel Smith graphically supported an online event that addressed the complexities of higher education in a digital age. Using a tablet, illustration software and web-conferencing technologies, Rachel created visual notes during each of the gathering’s three featured online events.

The event was hosted by EDUCAUSE, a networking and resource hub for IT professionals working in higher education. The three-day online Sprint featured an interactive mix of...

Greg Voisen poses a question to David Sibbet during a .

Question: You mentioned that visual listening is at the heart of every meeting. What do you mean by visual listening? I’ve heard of all kinds of listening – compassionate listening, listening from the heart – but what is visual listening?

David Sibbet: Visual listening is showing people how you are listening to them by drawing what you’re hearing as you listen.

If you think about the traditional...

Agile visual planning empowers both individual leadership and group creativity—a formula for good results for organizations that employ it.

The concept of agile planning is inspired by agile software development, a method of providing versions that are “just good enough” to engage a user base—then iterating through ever more complete and polished releases that reflect real user experience.

To get going, propose a concept, a direction, or a generative idea; then...

Is your team working together effectively? Gain new insight into your co-located or distributed team, and identify areas for improvement, with the Team Performance Online Survey.

Watch the webinar >

We’ve just posted the recording of our recent webinar (5/14/13) about The Grove’s online survey tool for teams. Laurie Durnell, director of consulting, and Rachel Smith, director of digital facilitation services, walk through the tool from the perspectives of both a team...

Editor’s Note: A global biotechnology company began using The Grove’s Team Performance tools three years ago and the Team Performance Online Survey late last year. Their Learning and Development team draws from the Team Performance System to strengthen team cohesion and performance across wide-ranging functions and locations. Here is the company’s Team Performance story as shared by the project lead, a Learning & Development manager.

Accelerating and...

The Grove has worked on strategic planning for many years with DLR Group, a national architectural firm. Recently one of our close collaborators at the firm got in touch to share wonderful news: Architect Magazine named DLR Group the #1 design firm in the United States. “Your process has helped us transform our firm,” he wrote.

We called Jon Pettit and Griff Davenport, DLR Group’s managing principals, to learn more about their firm’s journey to...

Excerpted from Visual Leaders by David Sibbet (John Wiley & Sons, 2013)

Seeing the forest and the trees is vital to effective decision making. Much of this involves thinking through what needs to be compared with what.

You as a leader can ask for functional plans to be presented to you in ways that aid you in comparing and prioritizing activities using whole-system vision. These types of environments are called decision rooms, project rooms, or rapid decision support centers.

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If you have been fortunate enough to be part of a high-performing and well-aligned team, you won’t soon forget the experience. Unfortunately for most of us, this is all too rare an occurrence.

If your team is flailing, divided, or lacking clarity, The Grove’s newly released Team Performance Online Survey (TPOS) can help.

A Platform for Team Learning and Improvement

The TPOS and resulting Report power a data-rich series of conversations to help your team move...

Betsy Stites and Pam Hull had a problem. They had completed a focused strategy process in their organization, the HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN. Now the big goal for HealthEast was “to be the benchmark of quality in the Twin Cities.” The problem was how!

“There had been a lot of uncertainty,” Betsy reflects. “Quality is so ethereal. We had to figure out a way to integrate things from an organizational and cultural standpoint.”

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Author: David Sibbet

What do loosely coupled systems, a stand-up meeting, and tequila have to do with each other? They were all elements in our successful Visual Teams workshop a few weeks ago at Fort Mason, in San Francisco, and argue for why visuals are working with teams.

At the opening of the workshop we invited everyone to share his or her best team experience, and then identify the relevant qualities on a Mandala Vision Graphic Guide® (Groups invariable rediscover the...

1. Gain Alignment. Need to get everyone on the same page in your organization? The Grove‘s Storymap™ process is designed to reveal and resolve alignment issues, refine the message and get all stakeholders on the same page and moving toward the same goal.

2. Clarify the Complex. Fresh visuals provide a clarifying way for people to understand a complex situation. Different information may be flying all over an organization with few people knowing how pieces fit together....